The Three Worlds: Survival, Emotional, and Practical
WARMTH, EMPATHY, AND NON-INTUITIVE RESPONSES
WARMTH (alone) IS NOT EMPATHY (But necessary to it)
I hope I do not sound too full of myself when I share with you that I am sometimes surprised by what I write. In writing my book, Aspiring to Kindness: Transforming Type A Behavior, I often felt surprised after writing something: “I didn’t know I thought that,” “That’s interesting,” “I’ve never put that together that way before,” etc. It is always a very pleasant experience and one that informs me of what some portion of my brain has been thinking. Like I said, I hope that does not sound too much like bragging or blowing my own horn.
I had a similar experience with my previous blog article, #7, How to Know When the EW is in the Room. I wrote and rewrote that article a number of times. In one of my earlier versions I wrote:
In its essence, the EW is warm because we only do it voluntarily with people we love. Love is warm. So, it is a given that under all the layers of misunderstanding or combat over the years, you will find warmth. If the warmth is gone, if the fire is truly out in the fireplace and not even an ember is still aglow, that relationship has ended for all functional purposes, at least in the EW. However, if there are still embers, then the fire can be reignited because the fundamental essence, the true substance of the EW is still there. It is important to understand a crucial difference: Warmth is not Empathy.
When I wrote the words, “Warmth is not Empathy,” I had one of those moments. I was intrigued by what I had written. I have no memory of ever having had that thought before. So I sat and looked at those words for a time. This may sound a little strange, but as I read and reread these words, I nodded my head in agreement. I began to see that there is an important distinction to be made between the two.
The idea for this article came from that thought. Just as I had not planned article #7, nor had I planned this one. Once I have written this, I believe I will be able to move on to the compelling concept of the three kinds of relationships possible in the EW: Healing, Limp-along and Destructive.
WARMTH AND THE EW
In these writings, I have repeated continually that the essence of the EW is warmth. That is because this is a World where we engage with relatively few other human beings over a long period of time. It is a World of choice: “I choose you and I want to be with you over time and I am committed to you in a way that goes far beyond mere acquaintanceship. I want you to know me and I want to know you.”
The first inklings that we love and really like someone are surrounded with a sense of warmth. We also sense or hope that the other person shares these same sentiments. Discovering another person’s affection is exciting. Discovering we have affection for that other person is exciting. It is deeply warm. People who have created durable relationships over time are able to recall that warmth through the use of memory and relive it in real time.
It is like coming in from a chilly night to find a cheery fire warming the hearth. The warmth sends the cold away. Affection sends the cold away. Affection, like any fire has to be nurtured and maintained, feeding it the needed fuel to keep it alive.
Anthropologists surmise that there was a long period between the discovery of the benefits of fire as useful to cooking and warmth and knowing how to create it from scratch. Before that time, our ancestors would “harvest” fire from spontaneous combustions such as those caused by lightning strikes.
No one knows how many hundreds or thousands of years it took for our ancestors to make that discovery. In the meantime, they would have been very careful to carry their source of fire from one location to another during migrations, never allowing it to go out. It was precious and it protected their lives. The same can be said about affection. This is a very good metaphor for the care we must devote to maintaining affection in our love relationships.
W. Macneile Dixon says the most interesting thing about kindness:
But for the impulse towards kindness already seated in the human heart the talkers talk in vain. Were it not already in our nature, as well imagine you could impart valor to a stone or humor to an alligator, as plant it there. (p. 290, The Human Situation)
He is saying that the warmth of kindness has been in our nature from early in our evolution. One can also argue persuasively that other elements, less luminous have also been in our natures. As we can see from any study of humankind, this warmth that is natural to us can be overwhelmed by the demands of survival. It is believed that warfare with its attendant violence and hatreds have been our companions for countless millennia.
Therefore, warmth and kindness can be seen as natural components of our nature, but as more fragile in times of survival stress. There is a line from the Vietnam war era movie, Full Metal Jacket, just after a new platoon has arrived in the war zone, “Now you are going to find out how mean a bunch of nice young American boys can become.” I hope this line was never actually spoken during the war.
I think the opposite can be found in William Manchester’s personal memoir of WWII, Goodbye Darkness. He saw a lot of action in the Pacific theater of the war. In one of its final bloodbaths, the battle of Iwo Jima, he was wounded. It was serious enough that he was moved from the front to the rear. He went AWOL from his hospital and returned to battle. He was wounded again, this time gravely, and left for dead until a passing corpsman noticed he was still alive and he was saved. He suffered from his severe head injury the rest of his life.
After the war, others asked him what he asked himself, “Why had he returned to the front?” He was mystified. He had the “golden” excuse. He was wounded. He was safe in a hospital at the rear. Over time, he came to the revelation that he loved the men in his unit more than he had ever loved any other humans in his life.
He had to go back to the front. He had to do everything in his power to protect those he loved. He would never have forgiven himself if any of them had been wounded or killed in his absence. He had to be there in order to do all he could to protect them. In the midst of the brutality of warfare he had discovered the love that resided within him. He discovered he was willing to die or be wounded for the sake of those whom he loved.
WHEN WARMTH IS NOT ENOUGH
I often observe that no couple walks down the aisle to be married dreaming that someday they will have a bitter divorce full of resentment and disillusionment. No, they dream that the warmth they feel will be compounded and grow. They might not use these words or know this concept, but they dream that their marriage will evolve into a “Healing” relationship and not one that would be characterized by the lifeless label, “Limp-Along” or least of all the chaotic label, “Destructive.” And yet, that is exactly where so many hopeful relationships eventually find themselves, divorce or no divorce.
What happens? Why is it that so many relationships founded on genuine warmth, mutual attraction and, often, intense love founder on the rocks of disappointment and blame? Simply put, warmth is not enough. It is not sufficient to the stresses and demands of the EW. It has to grow into something more durable, tougher, and resilient. It needs to grow into empathy. Warmth is not empathy.
As you might know from reading my book, Aspiring to Kindness: Transforming Male Type A Behavior, and from the many references made throughout my other writing, I found in my friend Meyer Friedman one of the kindest and most empathic humans I have known.
There is ample evidence that this was not always so. When someone asked him how he had been able to come up with the large volume of information on people afflicted with Type A Behavior, he said, “It was simple. I just put a small mirror on my table, looked into it and began to write.”
He was not being entirely facetious. He had been nicknamed “Cannon Ball” as a young intern. It is said that people needed to move aside when he was coming down the hallway lest they be knocked aside by his headlong rush. His son Joe gave me a photo of his father as a much younger man, probably in his early fifties. He was in his white coat looking at the camera through a maze of scientific paraphernalia in his laboratory. I could not recognize the face.
The eighty-year-old man who befriended me had amusement crinkles on his face and luminous warmth. I could see none of those qualities on the face looking at me from that picture. On close inspection, it is easy to see in the eyes his intense intelligence, but no markers of warmth. By his own recounting he was mostly ambition in those days.
And yet that once cool face staring out starkly from that photo would many years later say in our first interview:
Dr. McNeel, you seem to have many of the qualities we are seeking in our group leaders. But I must tell you one thing. We believe the men and women in our groups change because their group leaders truly care about them. Absent true warmth we cannot be effective in helping people change. If we ever discover that you are not deeply caring for your group members, only showing up to do the work to earn your paycheck, we will fire you.
There was no question in my mind that he was completely serious. I remember feeling thrilled that I had met someone who would fire me if I did not employ sufficient compassion and empathy in my work. I like to say of his statement that I would have walked through a wall for him in that moment. I was his.
Going back to what Dixon wrote of the impulse toward kindness being already instilled in the human heart, I am reminded of Dr. Friedman’s first book, Functional Cardiovascular Disease[i]. He wrote this book not long after WWII publishing it in 1947. It is simply dedicated: “To my parents.” As a dedication, this was certainly sufficient but a far cry from his heart-felt and empathic dedications contained in his subsequent books on Type A Behavior (1974, 1984).
That first book is prescient and written in the cool prose of scientific jargon. Plodding through it I could hardly recognize the man I knew except, of course, for the clarity of intelligence and for the integrity of his research. However, toward the end of the book, he rails gently about physicians being scary to children and indeed, “to the child inside each person” no matter their age. He asks why that is so common and wouldn’t it be better if those physicians were more reassuring and compassionate.
In those fleeting lines I felt connection to the empathic man I met forty-three years later. Amidst his scientific creed, one could catch a glimpse of the man to come, who believed in the healing power of affection and friendship.
That germ of his warmth and that “impulse toward kindness” had transformed from something rarely visible and easily dissuaded into an overarching characteristic of his being. He often said, “What comes out of us is what we are full of.” By 1989, he was full of warmth and compassion. Of course, he was still brilliant and occasionally the “old man” came out. That man could still be pretty breathtaking in his harshness, but that was the exception, not the rule. He not only hadn’t lost those glimpses of warmth in his younger self, but it had grown gloriously (very reluctantly[ii]) into empathy.
THE NECESSITY OF EMPATHY
There is a question that I have frequently asked, more often to men than to women, “If you did your work life in the same manner in which you do your committed relationship (marital) life, what would happen?” To this query came only one response with slight variants, “I’d lose my job,” “I’d be fired” or just a knowing laugh and a shake of the head
There is something in us that presumes the light of affection, once lit will stay lighted. Somehow, we lose the sense of the fragility of the ember that must be guarded while being transported from one campsite to the next. We presume the initial warmth will remain even though “storms” might await us.
I remember my astonishment many decades ago by what I heard a husband say to his wife. In response to her imprecations that he never told her that he cared for her he said defensively, “I told you the day we got married that I love you.” “Yes, you did” she agreed, “And that was fifteen years ago.” There was not much fuel being placed on that fire.
It is obviously a mistake in EW to never say to your loved ones that they are loved. This man’s habit of never saying the vital words of love revealed an even greater and more common error on his part. He could not imagine what it felt like for her to be starved of his affection. That is, he was missing the most vital element of the EW: Empathy.
The lack of empathy in relationship is connected to another vital element: Curiosity. It never occurred to him to wonder what sort of experience she was having being married to him. And it would have never occurred to him to have either of those elements as they related to himself.
Without the sustaining strength and presence of empathy, a relationship will stultify and become locked in longing for a time (real or imagined) long past. Because we came from a home environment we did not choose, we might have been given “instructions” on how to carry on a Healing, a Limp-Along or a Destructive relationship. That original setting will have determined our “set point” and it will be what feels most familiar to us. It is very powerful.
Spoken or unspoken, the vast majority in forming a committed bond, be it friendship or marriage, wish for it to be Healing. In theory, all relationships can be healing or can “move” in that direction. However, if the element of empathy does not come into play, if there is no ability to imagine the feelings of the other person (of or one’s own self) then the relationship will be stuck near the original set point; no matter the depth of the longing.
Warmth is good and necessary in relationships. If there is not warmth, or the warmth once there has truly died, there will be little possibility for empathy to emerge. Lacking empathy there will be a hollow space or a chill where warmth should abide. Emotional growth will be minimal and habits attained from our childhood “set point” will dominate.
The good news is that it is possible for our warmth to grow into empathy. We need to understand this. We also need to understand the difference between the blessing of simple warmth and durable empathy:
1. Empathy is not pity or even sympathy because its essence is compassion.
2. Empathy is not irritable because its essence is patience.
3. Empathy is not weakness because its essence is confidence in the power of influence.
By way of contrast with the three “truths” above regarding empathy, consider this about warmth and its limitations:
1. Warmth, unlike empathy, will want to mend or fix the feelings of another person.
2. Warmth, unlike empathy, does not possess sufficient wisdom to handle suffering.
3. Warmth, unlike empathy, will not cause people to adapt their lives for the benefit of others.
THINK OF IT AS A SKILL
It has to be confusing to some to try to fathom the difference I am alleging exists between warmth and empathy. Lots of folks use the two words interchangeably and might think I am nitpicking. Of course, they might be right! But I think there is value in understanding the difference, at least as I understand it.
This is a somewhat silly example. When my two children were very young, we had a series of white rats as pets. One day, my five-year old daughter had our current rat out of his cage and was doing a wonderful job of holding it and talking to it like a good parent would talk to a child. She was being very warm. The warmth was genuine. I felt gratified.
I looked up from my book a few minutes later to discover that she had left the rat on top of the cage. Our cat on the other side of the room was transfixed and lashing his tail perhaps contemplating a meal to come. Feeling empathy for the rat I got up and put him into the cage.
Years later, I was talking to a legendary singing instructor and she taught me something very important. All of her young students were very talented. Without talent they would not have qualified to be in her care. She confided to me that it was not enough in the singing world to only be talented. “No one makes it on talent alone. He or she must do the hard work to turn their talent into a skill.” I understood. The same is true of athletic talent and so many others.
I think this is an excellent metaphor regarding warmth and empathy. Natural warmth is a wonderful thing. Acquiring warmth from the observation of others and through imitation is a blessing. That warmth can be a wonderful gift in the short term, a welcome band aide on a superficial wound, but it will find itself flummoxed in the face of suffering. It will fall in on itself. It will fail.
In this metaphor, empathy is skill that has been acquired and honed through conscious intent and desire. Empathy is tough, resonant, informed, and experienced. It does not blanch or become frustrated at the lack of an immediate solution. It can see the long game and can endure. I hope this example helps.
THE NON-INTUITIVE NATURE OF EMPATHY
I’ve already used the story of the man who comes home in a snit and says truly hurtful things to his wife, inflammatory things. Instead of responding in a linear manner, she stuns her husband with her understanding and ability not to take his words personally, “Sounds like you have had a terrible day. Would you like to get a glass of wine and talk about it?” I love this response because her warmth is not crushed and does not abandon her in that moment. It is evident that her warmth had grown into empathy. Empathic responses are often non-linear and non-intuitive.
In regard to the EW and what to do when it is present, I enjoy using the example of the first time I ever went skiing at some small “hill” in Ohio with some fellow seminarians in 1969. They gave us huge long skis, double tie boots and no instructions. I went up the bunny slope and thought I was standing on the edge of a precipice. Lacking instruction, I did the intuitive thing. I leaned back in my boots with my legs straight. I proceeded to fall all over that hill the rest of that day[iii].
When I went skiing for a second time in North Carolina I attended a class. The instructor first showed us how to do a snowplow so we could slow down or stop, reducing the terror level by a factor of ten. Then she said the most remarkable thing: “In order to be in control on the slopes, you must bend your knees, get your head over the front of your skis and look down the hill.”
If you ski, you know this. I thought it was the most fantastical thing I had ever heard, but of course it worked. It was just not intuitive. “Leaning in” in the EW is not intuitive (unless you grew up around it being demonstrated) but it is the only way it can work to its full potential, at least if your goal is to have healing relationships.
Perhaps, empathy is never as non-intuitive as it is in our relationship, not with others, but with our own self. The vast majority of people I have had the privilege to know at depth, including myself, are hard, even cruel, to themselves. In the presence of even the most minor mistake, it is not uncommon for them to reveal very harsh utterances in their minds: “You idiot,” “You stupid jerk,” “How could you be so worthless,” and on it goes. And that does not strike most people as curious that they would talk to themselves in such a crude and unkind way. It feels intuitive. But then, what comes out of us or toward us is what we are full of.
For twenty-five years I led groups of ten to twelve people backpacking into the foothills of the Sierras for group psychotherapy workshops. Even decades later I still am told from time to time how impactful these workshops were as well as being great fun. One of our rituals following lunch was to hike from our campsite up the Middle Fork of the Consumnes River to a deep swimming hole. It was frigid but most went swimming albeit briefly for some.
Walking back from one of these treks I walked too closely by a pine tree and was stabbed in the leg by a broken branch. I swore at myself while reciting a usual litany of abuse. As I did, I looked at the person walking ahead of me, one of my participants for whom I was a caregiver. I noted that if she had run into that same stub, I would have immediately asked how she was and if she was hurt. I certainly would not have used the language scorching through my own head.
So I corrected myself. I asked myself if I was hurt, did I need anything and if I was going to be OK. I answered these queries saying that no, I was ok, just feeling stupid for not seeing the limb. It felt quite different from the tongue-lashing I had been giving myself only seconds before. And it felt good.
Over the years I have been able to soften many of my responses to errors that I make but “won’t remember in five years.” It had always been intuitive to “beat myself up,” and I can certainly still do a commendable job of it given the right stimulus. But the chemistry of my brain has changed. I am much more curious about my mistakes than condemning. Remember, curiosity is a vital component of empathy.
AT THE HEART OF IT
Warmth is not empathy. Simple warmth will fail us in moments when we get poked in the leg by a tree stub. It vanishes and is of no meaningful comfort to self or to others. There can be no empathy for other people unless we have come to the place of feeling it for our own suffering and pain. At this point of my life, this seems like simple truth to me.
It is also essential that we are able to admire the qualities that have allowed us to prosper and forge on in the face of great challenge. Empathy will not allow us to compare ourselves negatively with some myth of perfection; it will not allow us to be so cruel. Empathy can see things in perspective. Empathy is real love.
Feeling our own pain and our own joy allows us to feel it in others. At its root, empathy is the ability to feel the feelings of others, even if that “Other” is one’s self at a much earlier age. Empathy does not try to “fix” things as much as create an atmosphere where healing can abide. It is a process, not a destination. The presence of empathy means it is possible to feel the full range of our feelings. It means that others around us can do the same without fear of rejection or recrimination.
Empathy has nothing in common with selfishness or narcissism. In fact, it is the cure for both of those. If you do not wish to feel the empathy extended to you by other people, if you see it as merely unwanted pity, if you see no reason to do the hard work of transforming your own warmth into empathy, if you are content to remain “defensibly nice,” you have nothing to fear. You won’t have it. It will not come to your door.
This paper became surprisingly long. I want to end it by paraphrasing a wonderfully empathic man, the late James J. Gill, M.D. He was on Dr. Friedman’s faculty, both a Jesuit priest and a board-certified psychiatrist. For over four years, he flew to the west coast every other weekend from his home at Harvard University to conduct eight treatment groups, all dedicated to reducing Type A Behavior and replacing it with affection:
The title, “The world’s most empathic person” is still up for grabs. You still have the chance of receiving it. So, go for it.
DEDICATION
This article is dedicated to the memory of Kevin Seward, a close friend and hunting partner for almost fifty years. Though in his daily life he was a businessman, he was the faithful cook on all of the above-mentioned wilderness workshops for more than a quarter century. He not only cooked wonderful food out in the wilds, but also provided his own brand of humor and warmth that added greatly to the healing ambience of those treks. He was called “Uncle Kevin” and is deeply missed.
FOOTNOTES
[i] This first book doubtless was met with critical acclaim among Dr. Friedman’s peers in the scientific world. Not surprisingly, it did not bring him notoriety beyond that circle and would not have represented a monetary windfall. One of my group members tracked down a copy and gave it to me, a very sweet gift. That copy is not a designated first edition, but I have no doubts that it is as I feel certain there was no second edition.
Dr. Friedman’s travels brought him to London in the late 1960’s and his research took him to the British Museum Library, still housed at that time in the circular building located in the inner mall of the Museum. He became curious to see if the Library had a copy of his book. It did. So, he inquired as to how many people had checked it out in twenty years. No one had.
So, he checked it out and “kept it company for time so it would not be so lonely.” They could ascertain its history because in those days they had a sheet for each book to sign out. His name was the first to be listed on the sheet. To say the least, he was more than a little chagrinned that no one had sought it out. Of course, by the time he told me the story it was recounted with humor and empathy for his younger self.
I made a determination then and there to “visit” his lonely book and I did just that. I would often stop in London to rest for a day or two on my trips to Rome where I taught. I went to the library that had moved to its own separate location away from the museum. To be admitted into the stacks I had to fill out a long application form. An official of the museum went through the form one item at a time.
There was a question asking why I wished to have admittance to the stacks. I had answered, “So I could visit my friend’s book.” He asked the name of the book and checked to see that the library possessed it. It did. So, he gave me my entrance pass and I went into the wonderful and vast reading room and checked it out.
I had dreamed of signing it out on the same sheet containing Dr. Friedman’s name so my name would be next to his in perpetuity. By the time I arrived there, of course, it was all handled using computers so I was not able to fulfill that part of the dream. While sitting with his book I also checked out other titles from Mcneille Dixon as all of his titles were in the library. I wrote Dr. Friedman a letter telling him I was visiting his forlorn little volume. I posted that letter from the library.
On all subsequent trips to London I made it my habit to revisit his book. I carried one of his frontispieces with me and tucked it into the back of the book and wrote down the dates of my visits. I last visited it following Dr. Friedman’s death in 2001. Sitting with it, I wrote letters to each of his three children telling them where I was and that I was visiting their dad’s book.
Given the opportunity I will visit it again. Who knows? Maybe the little frontispiece is still tucked in it and I can add yet another entry so that his little book “won’t feel quite so lonely.”
[ii] If you do care to look up Dr. Friedman’s dedication in his second book, it reads in part, “to James J. Gill, a devout Jesuit priest and a dedicated physician….in appreciation of his making love a more meaningful spiritual power to the counselors….” Well, one of those counselors was the doctor himself. He reported to me that he argued strenuously with Dr. Gill and others on his treatment team. He was a scientist, trained to measure only what could be measured. He would have subscribed to the old scientific maximum, “If it can’t be measured, it doesn’t exist.” In the end, he became a “convert.” He came to believe in the power of affection and the vital role of the numinous, of awe in human life.
His transformation was not unlike C. S. Lewis’ description of his own conversion, coming after great reluctance to submitting to what he had come to see as the truth, “…perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”
[iii] That day on the ski slope in Ohio provided me with one of the funniest moments in my life. There were four, maybe five, of us out that day. If you are scratching your head about a ski slope being in Ohio, I can attest it was really there. It was built on more of a high mound than a hill, but there none-the-less. We were all rank beginners, none having ever been on a slope. There was no instruction available and the skis were taller than we were.
It took forever to get the antiquated equipment on along with our skyscraper skis. One of my classmates from Tennessee, Wendell Phillips, was the first out the door. By the time we arrived outside, he was already standing at the top of the bunny slope looking very confident and determined. Then he pushed off boldly and came straight down the hill, flying it seemed to us.
We nudged one another knowingly. He could ski and was now showing off for us. That is, until he reached the bottom of the hill where we could hear him. His eyes were wild with panic and he was screaming, “Help me. Help me!” He slowed as he went off the base of the slope and across the parking lot stopping when he gently bumped into the side of a parked car.
This is a good story and we all laughed about it for years. It is also a good reminder of how people feel in the EW lacking proper instruction. All in all, he wasn’t in any real danger but he felt like he was going to die. Ditto that for the EW.